Global South Anglican

To speak of Anglicanism today, either as a church tradition or as an ecclesial communion, is to speak of one of the most vibrant and unstable expressions of Christianity within the world.  Churches are growing in numbers in some areas of the world at a staggering pace. In other parts of the world, ideas are being articulated and debates are taking place with a dizzying energy.  We all know that relations – within national Anglican churches and among them – are charged, confusing, and re-ordering themselves every day with unexpected direction and sometimes ferocity.  How does this experienced picture of the Anglican Church match the image of the stodgy and tempered parochial life of rural England that we still carry in our imaginations?

The year 2007, then, is a gift from God to us:  a gift to provoke our gratitude for the witness and efforts of others; a gift to provoke our repentance and sorrow at the sins and sufferings our ancestors have caused and received, and that we ourselves continue to perpetuate in different ways; a gift to provoke our vocation to fulfill the Christian imperative of life in the Body, accountable, sustaining, and self-giving for the life of the world.  May the Lord continue to open our eyes.

The vestry of Grace and St. Stephen’s, Colorado Springs, announced its intention (March 26) for the parish to leave the Diocese of Colorado and affiliate with the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). The parish’s rector, the Rev. Don Armstrong, has also transferred to CANA.

The Living Church report: Colorado Springs Parish Plans to Join CANA.

For more news and reports on the situation, go here.

Summary of the latest comments on the recent House of Bishops’ statements

Ephraim Radner: What Way Ahead – Part Two

Christopher Seitz: The Pastoral Council and the Primatial Vicar & earlier, The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion

Jordan Hylden: The Episcopal Declaration of Independence

Graham Kings: The Church of England:More than Evangelical but not Less

The sensitivities of this exercise are obvious. Social, cultural and legal contexts are very varied indeed. And in the present climate of the Anglican Communion, there is inevitably a suspicion either that this is just window-dressing, or that it is a covert programme for changing doctrine and discipline. Real – and mutual – listening is hard to achieve. There are contexts where it is difficult to find a safe place for gay and lesbian people to speak about their lives openly. There are contexts where people assume the debate is over. The report shows that listening is possible, but also that there is a great deal still to be done. The work continues, but we have a solid start here.

The summaries of the Listening Process can be found here

“The recent House of Bishops meeting made clear that the alienation between TEC’s leadership and the Anglican Communion as a whole, at least as represented by its Instruments of Communion, has become currently unbridgeable. The bishops of TEC are convinced that their policies of gay inclusion are non-negotiable, and even the Presiding Bishop has made clear that there is “no going back” on actions and commitments made on this score. The clarity of the bishops’ and Executive Council’s and General Convention’s statements around this subject give the lie to any claim that TEC’s leadership is interested in “listening”, let alone learning from the rest of the Communion, or that they perceive their commitments even to be a part of some “reception” process of testing. They have made their decision regarding the absolute imperative of the Gospel on this score (as they see it), and no amount of conferences and dialogues on biblical “hermeneutics” and “cultural perspectives” will budge them from their perceived duty. Those within the church who disagree may be granted some measure of space to live out their ministries (although who knows?); but it has now been made very clear that they have no standing to oppose, for their views have been judged illegitimate. There is no place to go, in their view, but either towards an embrace of their now settled convictions, or away to the fading margins of their domain....I was struck, at the recent House of Bishops’ meeting, with the open abuse, often personally directed, thrown at the Primates by many of our bishops.”

Ed: This article by Ephraim Radner is revealing (of the attitude of most in the HOB). We should read beyond the veneer of Christian-speak and grapple with the current realities. Only when truth is faced with the truth that the Communion can resolved this crisis and move on. We are all very tired of these.

The Statements and Resolutions released on 20th of March

A Message to God’s People…from the Bishops of the Episcopal Church.

From Bishop John Howe, Florida

From Bishop Kirk Smith, Arizona

From Bishop Henry Parsley, Alabama

Responses & Reports:

Ephraim Radner: Which Way ahead?

AAC Statement on the Episcopal House of Bishops’ March 2007 Meeting

Associate Press: Episcopal bishops reject ultimatum

USA Today: Episcopal bishops reject ultimatum

Virtue Online: Episcopal Church House of Bishops rejects Primates’ Ultimatum

Ed - For those who have eyes to read, ears to hear and minds to discern, it is not difficult to see where TEC wants to go and consistently so. You link this up with the recent rejection of Mark Lawrence on grounds of ‘canon laws” and other actions being taken, and you see clearly where the will of the PB and TEC HOB lies.

A Statement and Resolutions from TEC House of Bishops – March 20, 2007

As I said to the Episcopal News Service immediately after the meeting, the most well-represented view around the table was that the covenant was preventative. According to that view, the point of a covenant is to prevent any significant change from occurring in the Church’s doctrine and practice. Proponents of that view were and are eager to have a covenant in place as quickly as possible, so that there will be procedures available to prevent any unwelcome innovations from their point of view. There had been discussion earlier that the covenant drafting and discussion process might take as long as ten years, but at our meeting it became clear that the covenant process would be moving at top speed. It was even suggested at one point that the completed covenant be ratified by all bishops at Lambeth 2008. The present timetable is not quite that fast: the Anglican Communion will have until the end of 2007 (so about nine months) to respond to the Proposed Anglican Covenant. Then the Covenant Design Group or some other group will re-craft the Covenant for approval at Lambeth and the ratification process will happen as soon as possible after that. The point is, we’re talking about an accelerated process. 

A presentation by Ephraim Radner to the House of Bishops on the Proposed Anglican Covenant. 

The town of Antalaha has been badly damaged and the Church + School which has just been repaired has suffered bad damage. And so it goes for all my 125 church communities in the Diocese as excessive damage to houses and Churches and civil infrastrucrure have been caused due to the 150 km gusts wind and strong rains. Andapa, Sambava, Vohemar, Daraina, Ambanja, Anaborano Ifasy, Mardimaka Ambanja , Diego Suarez etc.and other towns are among the list of affected places.

A weekend of prayer, reflection, and study of environmental sustainability and God’s mission has engaged the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops as its members have prepared to respond to the Primates’ Communique and the proposed Anglican Covenant.

You can get a good summary of the responses at Thinking Anglican or over at Titusonenine

No core Anglican doctrines should prevent the blessing of same-sex unions, Canadian Anglican leaders said in a decision that could set their church on a collision course with the global Anglican Communion.

1. Making Promises: the Proposed Anglican Covenant in the life of Communion - Ephraim Radner evaluates the Proposed Covenant
Ed: this started the discussion and debate.

2. A Very Godly Order: A Response to Ephraim’s evaluation by Michael Poon

3. Uncovering the light: the Proposed Covenant our Anglican Heritage. A response to Dr. Poon

4. The trivial round, the common task: Sober Notes to Dr Radner

5. 3 questions to your clarification - Ephraim responds to Poon

On a practical level, as you point out, this Common Prayer tradition has become undone.  So, I ask you if you have a suggestion as to how it might be renewed and strengthened through the Covenant?  Simply listing the 1662 Prayer Book tradition as “guiding” does not seem to be sufficient, and I would agree. But how it shapes the entire section to make clearer the foundational aspects of the tradition we both seem to believe needs to be renewed here.  Concrete suggestions of this kind are precisely what are needed. 

True, as Dr Radner notes, “for all the failures and continuing failures”, the Communion is beginning to learn from the Global South. Well, not if the hierarchy still sanctions the “quadrant-model”. We need to break away from labeling people and find the ability to listen without prejudice to the contributions they make.  And even if things are moving slowly, how does change happen? I do not suppose the status quo achieves this. It is happening because of the initiatives that some Global South churches are taking. For some, such initiatives may be too audacious and inconvenient, but they are part of the learning processes that challenge our suppositions and widen our horizons. 

Here is where the conciliar character of the Proposed Covenant is perhaps more prominent than Dr. Poon would like:  the form of “Doxology-orthodoxy, right interpretation of the Word, and right and proper praise [that] underpin Christian ecclesial life” is not up for grabs, is not some human invention, but it must nonetheless be recognized and embraced by the human followers of Christ within the church.  Conciliar life undergirds covenant not because councils and their members do not “err”; just the opposite.  Conciliar life undergirds covenant because it is the formal agency of the erring Church’s act of constant re-conversion to the truth.  It does not supersede the truth; it apprehends it within the historical life of the Church, which includes her many failures. 

It is the faith expressed in a common order that binds us all in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic ecclesial community. Decisions on the ecclesiastical order are best left to Primates and bishops.  Their provisions are necessary; but they are at best like the gracious provision of fig leaves that hide our shame for those who live in the East of Eden. Deeper and wider than we imagine are God’s love for the whole People of God.  To deeper wrestling with our souls and wider fellowship with all his saints he has called us, that we may together enter his rest.  The surprisingly unpolemical draft from the Global South is a concrete gesture for restoring trust.

For those of us who have been involved in the various “dialogues” and political machinations of the past 15 years and who actually observe what is happening on the ground, the answer to this is up-or-down question has already been given in the negative:  the majority leadership of TEC denies Lambeth 1.10 in principle and in practice and has instituted its own alternative norm which will eventually become mandatory throughout the church.

There was no questioning at our meeting of the fact that the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 remains the standard of teaching on matters of sexual morality for the Communion. The Windsor Report requested certain assurances from The Episcopal Church with respect to the authorisation of Rites of Blessing for same-sex unions and the admittance of a candidate living in a sexual relationship outside marriage. It was our discernment at the meeting in Dar es Salaam that those assurances had not been as clearly given in the deliberations of General Convention as they might have been, and therefore we have asked the House of Bishops to clarify the response of The Episcopal Church in their two meetings in March and September this year. 

The House of Bishops expressed profound gratitude to Archbishop Peter J. Akinola and his colleagues in the Global South for the strong stand taken at the meeting, together with the gracious leadership of Archbishop Rowan Williams, and continue to pray that the Anglican Communion can move forward in truth and unity.

The present does not merely call for a refreshed study of the methods of interpreting scripture...To obey Christ today, Global South churches need to submit themselves to the Scripture in a more radical manner. ... The crisis is not out there in the West, but at the home front. The challenge before the churches is in translating their formal confession of the authority of the Scripture into practice: What does it mean in concrete terms for Christian communities to live under the authority of God’s Word? 

Based on a talk to the clergy of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, February, 2007